


Ritual and Sacrifice

by Kimi_Ichisaigosuki



Series: Cold Iron and Old Blood [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Gen, I'm pretty sure Percival is just plain human in canon, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Rituals, playing fast and loose with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 21:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11239872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki/pseuds/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki
Summary: Ritual and sacrifice play an important role in recovery.





	Ritual and Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> For those who don't read tags: BLOOD. Blood in food.  
> And for those who are touchy about this kind of thing: there is reference to the appropriation of pagan culture by Christianity.  
> Otherwise, enjoy this flight of fancy!

Most people didn’t know Percival made full use of his kitchen. It was stress relief, it was tradition, and in its own way, it was old magic. He baked bread and cookies, made soups and stews, roasted meats and made gravies from the drippings, even maintained an herb garden that his mother started in the back yard.

That garden had suffered terribly during his imprisonment.

One of the first things he did once he’d been allowed back home from the hospital, after clearing away all evidence of Grindelwald’s presence in his home and replaced everything that reminded him of how his family home had been turned into his prison—

— _the magnificent four-poster bed carved nearly two centuries ago with swirling designs of runes and symbols and spell circles meant to instill comfort and protection, the bed where he had been forced to retreat as far into his mind as he could, was smashed into splinters, the designs having fractured and warped the moment he woke up with a hand at his throat_ —

—and the reek of dark magic cleared from every room that he could get to, he went outside and took in the state of the herb garden. Some of the delicate plants were still alive, the rosemary in its specially warmed bed and the mint in its containment circle of stones to keep it from overgrowing the neighboring parsley. But the marigolds that kept out the rats too smart for the wards at the borders of the garden were tattered and failing, suffering from the proximity to dark magic. The basil had gone to seed and died, the dill was dead on the stalk and beyond salvation for use in recipes, and—

— _the absolute fury on Grindelwald’s face when the kitchen closed itself off from him, the doorway disappearing into the wall and the outside door sealing itself off, the windows going dark and opaque, and the quiet satisfaction that kept Percival sane as the dark wizard screamed and shouted and beat him to try to make him open the heart of the house for him_ —

—he went through the herb garden, salvaging and reviving what he could. Then he turned to the most important task to hand: convincing the house that it was safe again. He gathered a few of the more tender stalks of rosemary, pulled a head of garlic from the ground even through it was a bit early in the season for harvest, and went to the spot in the wall where the door was slowly being swallowed by the siding of the house.

Percival set his free hand against the door and didn’t so much as flinch when mortar from between the bricks beneath the siding crawled over his hand and trapped him in place. He just closed his eyes, breathed in and out, and slowly toed out of his shoes and vanished his socks and garters. He dug his toes into the dirt and let the land’s memory of him seep up into his body through his skin, reminding him of how and who he used to be. He felt the roots and branches of the trees reaching out to him, the earth flowing up and over his feet as the land that his family had lived on for generations refamiliarized itself with him, and he, himself with the land. He recalled the blood he’d spilled at the compass points of the estate and around the house and in the one spot he could always find peace: among the narcissus bulbs beneath the great tulip poplar tree.

He’d been eighteen when he’d been given the ability to control the wards around the estate, wards of the type his family had always been uncannily good at, and the blood spilled was his gift to the land that supported the protective spells. Ever since he’d stained the earth around the narcissus bulbs scarlet they’d flourished and spread so that the air was sweet with their perfume all through summer. And now, blood called to blood. He could feel his teeth point at the ends just a little, saw the lines and colors of the world become more vivid as his vision sharpened as well.

There was a stinging cut scored across his palm, then warm blood trickling down the door and down his wrist and staining the rolled-up cuff of his shirt, but that didn’t matter when the door suddenly sprang back into definition, the handle sprouting back from the carved wood and mortar flowing out from the space between the door and the frame back to where it belonged between the bricks.

The mortar freed his hand and the earth settled back beneath his feet, and when he opened his eyes there were narcissus blooming on either side of the door despite bulbs never having been planted there. Percival felt some of the tightness ease from around his chest and opened the door, taking a long moment to look around as the glass in the windows slowly faded back to translucency. Everything looked the same mix of old and modern as it had when he’d been captured, which was how it should be, but it surprised him nonetheless.

The root bin was still beside the door, the sink with its shiny faucets was still under the window across from the outside door, the old fireplace and adjacent gas oven with stovetop burners. The cabinets were dusty, but the same, and the electric Frigidaire was humming quietly. He grimaced quietly as he made his way into the kitchen, already dreading what he might find in the refrigerator. The door behind him swung itself wide open as the window slid open to let the stale air filter out, which gave him pause because he hadn’t done anything to prompt either event. The kitchen must be desperate to be revived, which was understandable; the house had been severely neglected, and as the sole surviving member of his immediate family, nobody had been in the kitchen to keep it alive during his imprisonment.

Percival left his shoes and socks outside and went straight to the sink to wash the rosemary and clean the worst of the dirt from the head of garlic before he started pulling the paper away from the tender bulb inside. He minced the rosemary leaves and the small garlic cloves, tender and delicate from being harvested early, and set them to weep their flavors into a shallow bowl of olive oil. He would have preferred butter if he trusted what was in the fridge, as this was less for his benefit than it was for the heart of his family home, and his family had always had an affinity for dairy.

He felt his lips quirk up as he remembered one of his earliest trips back to the old family homestead in Ireland, and leaning his back against the old weathered stone that marked where his six-times-great grandfather had gone back to the hills. That esteemed ancestor had spent hours telling him stories of how he’d played tricks on the cruel farmer who refused to leave cream or bread for the brownies, and beat his wife when she tried to honor the old ways. So, since the cream wasn’t going to their kin anyway, Percival’s many-times-great grandfather had turned the milk sour in the udders of the farmer’s cows.

The Graves family had been wilder then, and some of that wildness had faded as the last few generations married only wizards without bringing the Old Blood back into the line, but the wildness was still there for the Graves who weren’t afraid of the old magic that sparked in their veins.

He got the gas oven going and lit the fireplace, all by hand. Using his magic would have been cheating for the ritual he was undertaking, and there was something soothing about sweeping old soot from the hearth and sparking the gas to fire with a match. He pulled the baking stone from the shelf where it lived when not in use and looked it over for any dirt or cracks before sliding it into the gas oven to heat up. He then went to the pantry and cast a critical eye over the shelves, reaching out to the wards that kept vermin out.

He nodded in satisfaction when the wards hummed reassuringly, and hauled the flour and salt and bicarbonate out to the table in the center of the room. He mixed the dry ingredients in a deep, glazed earthenware bowl, going purely by memory, and then went to the smooth plaster covering where the door to the main house should be. He dusted the flour from his hands on his dark pants, uncaring if he was ruining the expensive fabric, and set both palms and his forehead against the wall. He grounded himself again, feeling the tile cold against the soles of his feet, and he breathed out, “ _please_.”

The plaster crumbled away to reveal the beautifully simple oak door that opened the heart of the home to the rest of the house. Percival felt himself shake with relief as he opened the door, not to the inside of a wall, but to the dining room lightening itself as the windows in that room restored themselves to translucency. He’d been confined to the guest bedroom by the end of his imprisonment, so he had no idea how much of the house had sealed itself off to Grindelwald, trying to encyst him like an oak gall around a wasp egg. He looked around, and saw that the house itself was taking care of many vestiges of the dark wizard’s presence. The smoke-like streaks of dark magic were burning away from the paneling on the walls as the windows seemed to focus the sunlight at the worst areas and the iron filings being pushed out of the carpet and slowly shifted towards the hallway that led to the front door. He turned away—

— _running, running to the back door in the hope of escape, brought down by a Cruciatus curse that hit him squarely between the shoulder blades, seeing the outline of his own tortured body cast on the walls by the light of the curses meant to break him down and the burns on his skin from whatever iron object Grindelwald could get his hands on before Percival lashed out with a wave of magic so strong that the iron, normally able to nullify anything he could throw at it, burst into dust. But that burned too as it got into his eyes and his nose and mouth_ —

—and made his way to the front hallway where there were bottles of sweet milk, buttermilk, and cream sitting on the ground under chilling charms. He picked up the bottles and brought them to the kitchen, and added the buttermilk to the dry ingredients before going to the fridge and pulling doors open. One look was all it took for him to close the doors again and vanish everything into the mulch pile at the back of the garden before he carefully opened the doors again to see the fridge pristine inside. He set the dairy inside and resolved to buy some butter and fruit and vegetables the next day. He felt a brief pang of loss for the sourdough starter that his mother had maintained after his grandmother, after her grandmother, but that bread had been made in the kitchen so often that he had no worries about being able to reclaim the yeast in a sponge set out on the counter for a few days. He sighed and turned his back on the refrigerator.

For the time being, he had a ritual to finish.

Percival returned to the bowl of buttermilk, flour, salt, and bicarbonate, and knew something was missing. He went to the knife block and reopened the cut on his palm, holding his hand over the deep bowl until the soft cream of buttermilk was marbled with vivid scarlet as the blood flowed from his hand. He finally pressed a clean towel to the cut until it stopped bleeding, then washed his hands and checked on the rosemary and garlic in the oil. The mixture was fragrant and he smiled, bringing the bowl over to the table where the dough was waiting to be made. He set the oil mixture down, then plunged his hands into the larger bowl and started working the dough together.

It all came together quickly, though it needed a bit more flour to make up for the extra liquid, and before long he was working the oil with rosemary and garlic into the bread dough. The open slice in his palm was stinging, but it wasn’t bleeding any more. That was a good sign, and the bread was stained crimson through and through with the blood he’d already spilled for it.

He shaped the dough into a ball and made deep cuts in the bread in the shape of a cross. The symbolism had been appropriated from Brigid centuries ago, but there were still those who remembered what the cross originally stood for before Christianity invaded the Isles, and the Graves family kept to the old traditions and made damn sure to remember the stories that had been all but washed away. He opened the oven and slid the bread dough onto the stone, then got to work cleaning up the kitchen as the bread baked.

By the time the bread was ready he’d gotten the kitchen close to its former glory. It would need more time, but it was a far cry better than it had been after its long isolation from the home that was supposed to give it life. He moved to the oven, then paused and fetched a saucer from a cupboard. He poured cream into the shallow dish and set it by the door before moving back to his original purpose. He pulled the bread from the oven and left it on the table to cool a bit, going to the fireplace and adding a bit more wood to get the flames leaping high.

Percival wiped the sweat from his eyes and turned back to the bread, sitting on the table with a beautiful deep brown crust. He picked it up and examined it for imperfections that would make it unsuitable, but it looked and smelled wonderful, a heady aroma of rosemary and garlic overlaying blood-derived iron, the only form of the metallic element that he’d never had a problem with.

He took the bread in both hands and broke it down the middle, feeling his mouth water as he watched steam rise from the rich earth-colored whorls inside the loaf from where it had been kneaded and twisted all around and into itself. He then turned to the fireplace and cast half of the sacrificial loaf into the heart of the flames, watching as the bread made by his own hands and blood began to burn. He watched until the half-loaf was well and truly aflame, a sacrifice to the heart of the home that had protected him from the worst of what Grindelwald could have done, then turned and walked out into the garden. Small pieces of the remaining half were torn off and buried in front of the narcissus framing the kitchen door and in the herb garden to repay the land the power it had expended protecting itself, and when he was done he had a third of a loaf left, which he took to the tulip poplar and its narcissus flowers. He crumbled the remainder of the loaf and scattered the crumbs all around the flowers and the base of the tree, feeling the last of his apprehension fall away as the last of his debt was repaid to his home and feeling all of the rooms that had sealed themselves away suddenly open back up.

Percival stood there for a long moment, just breathing as the Sidhe blood that had been running restless through his veins finally settled before tugging at him right beneath his solar plexus. He turned and looked in the direction he was being pulled, and knew he was being called home. Well, he was due a vacation anyway as part of his recovery.

It was time to return to Ireland and let his family come out from the hills and revive the dormant gifts of the blood sparking beneath his skin.

He let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, and smiled as the land breathed with him and the ley lines beat in time with his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> For those interested, here’s the recipe (more or less, I made modifications for how I would’ve made it myself) that Percival used, minus the blood: http://www.thislittlehome.co.uk/recipe-rosemary-and-garlic-soda-bread/  
> And while blood is sometimes used in bready products, it’s usually in pancake form like Finnish blood pancakes. I took liberties (yes, I’m well aware bleeding enough from a relatively superficial cut on the palm of the hand to make an entire loaf of bread the deep red-brown of cooked blood is highly unlikely), and a great deal of this is off the top of my head as I don’t have access to my usual books on the Sidhe and various religious customs.  
> Please, let me know what you thought! Concrit is absolutely welcome.


End file.
